Friday 4 July 2014

On Anniversaries Part One




I’m a little old fashioned when it comes to anniversaries and valentines day, I’ve known one or two ladies in my time, and I always got something wrong, whether it was not paying enough attention, paying too much attention, not doing enough, doing too much.  In the end I figured out that the fault may not have been entirely down to me, and that equal shares were required to make anything work. Didn’t matter how much I did, if the other side wasn’t interested, something was going to fail.

But that didn’t stop me trying, and now I’m married to someone who does make the effort every day, she puts up with all my gigantic melancholies, helps me when I need help, and stays out of the way when the mere suggestion of help causes green skin and smashing...

Yesterday was my sixth wedding anniversary, and I make a point every year of trying to find somewhere nice to stay and something interesting to do on the way.  It takes time (I’ll never tell how much) to find these places, but when you’ve got a wife like mine (and I know that most people don’t) who loves all manner things and gets all gleeful when you find things that she likes, it brightens my day when I see her happy, and so on anniversaries, I go that extra mile to let her know how much she means to me.

So this year, the trip was to Langley castle, but I’d found something else along the way, and that requires a little explaining as well.

When I say jude loves all manner of things, she really does, but the things she likes most of all?

Water and Awesome places.

So on the way to Langley Castle, there’s a place called High Force Waterfall, amusingly enough on the same road, and not a million miles further down the road.



Sometimes fate deals you a winner...

So, having told everyone except Jude where she was going, we set off in the new shiny and got there in comparatively little time.  Having planned ahead, I’d pointed out that she’d probably be happier if she’d brought something to paddle in, but when we got there, there was a problem that all swimming is out of bounds there, and you can’t get into the top end of the waterfall because some numpty managed to do themselves in there at some point...

Health and Safety is something that should only practised on those who need it, not inflicted on the rest of us...



Still, as you can see, someone got to the waterfront and was in the water in a few seconds. 



Ninja:Turtle

And then we went on to the castle, which I’ll cover in more detail in the next post, because I’d already figured that eating at the castle would be a no-no (having to pay immense amounts of money for food always sits badly with both of us, having lived through times where we had comparatively little and had to make every penny count), so I’d already searched out a place down the road called the Carts Bog Inn (www.cartsbog.co.uk)

Not the most auspicious of names I admit, but it looked like there would be reasonable sized portions for reasonable sized prices.

The view was excellent, and the weather warm enough to sit outside, so that was the way forwards.



And I was wrong about the size of the portions, reasonable prices to be sure...

Collossal portions of something with the suitably non-epic title of Bog Pie...



Delicious, then dessert, and something that looked suitably unsavoury...




But turned out to be orange barley bitter that was actually delicious, and all for less than the price of a single course at the castle, which will be the subject of the next post...